The Misbegotten Son

An account of the crimes of Arthur Shawcross describes how the paroled child killer shot, stabbed, suffocated, and strangled 16 Rochester, New York, prostitutes and examines how the legal system failed his victims.

American Murder Houses: A Coast-to-Coast Tour of the Most Notorious Houses of Homicide

From a colonial manse in New England to a small-town home in Iowa to a Beverly Hills mansion, these residences have taken on a life of their own, gaining everything from local lore and gossip to national - and even global - infamy. Here, writer Steve Lehto recounts the stories behind the houses where Lizzie Borden supposedly gave her stepmother "40 whacks", where the real Amityville Horror was first unleashed by gunfire, and where the demented acts of the Manson Family horrified a nation.

Murder in the Family

On March 15th, 1987 police in Anchorage, Alaska arrived at a horrific scene of carnage. In a modest downtown apartment, they found Nancy Newman's brutally beaten corpse sprawled across her bed. In other rooms were the bodies of her eight-year-old daughter, Melissa, and her three-year-old, Angie, whose throat was slit from ear to ear. Both Nancy and Melissa had been sexually assaulted.

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Former social worker S. R. Reynolds has never forgotten the mishandled case of 15-year-old Michelle Anderson, a vibrant beauty who went missing from Reynolds' Knoxville, Tennessee, neighborhood years earlier. Aided by her old professor, famed forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Bass, Reynolds picks up the trail of this cold case. As she presses neglected pieces of the puzzle into place, Reynolds unearths a string of heinous kidnappings and rapes across the South, crimes that span decades.

A Killer Among Us

On March 16, 1992, Elizabeth DeCaro, a 28 year-old mother of four, was found dead in her own home, murdered execution-style with two bullets to the head. Her husband, Rick, was immediately a suspect, having previously struck her "accidentally" with the family van after taking out a $100,000 life insurance policy on her. A Killer Among Us presents the true shocking story of Elizabeth's family and their search for justice against the man who continued to play father to the children whose mother he had killed.

The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez

Decades after Richard Ramirez left 13 dead and paralyzed the city of Los Angeles, his name is still synonymous with fear, torture, and sadistic murder. Philip Carlo's classic The Night Stalker, based on years of meticulous research and extensive interviews with Ramirez, revealed the killer and his horrifying crimes to be even more chilling than anyone could have imagined. The story of Ramirez is a bizarre and spellbinding descent into the very heart of human evil.

The Stranger She Loved: A Mormon Doctor, His Beautiful Wife, and an Almost Perfect Murder

In 2007, Dr. Martin MacNeill - a doctor, lawyer, and Mormon bishop - discovered his wife of 30 years dead in the bathtub of their Pleasant Grove, Utah, home, her face bearing the scars of a facelift he had persuaded her to undergo just a week prior. At first the death of 50-year-old Michele MacNeill, a former beauty queen and mother of eight, appeared natural. But days after the funeral, when Dr. MacNeill moved his much younger mistress into the family home, his children grew suspicious.

Bitter Remains: A Custody Battle, a Gruesome Crime, and the Mother Who Paid the Ultimate Price

On July 13, 2011, Laura Jean Ackerson of Kinston, North Carolina, went to pick up her two toddler sons. It would be the last time she was seen alive. Laura's ex, Grant Hayes - the father of her two sons - and his wife, Amanda, the mother of his newborn daughter, both pointed the finger at each other as the one guilty of murdering Laura, cutting up her body, and then transporting and disposing of the remains on the shores of Oyster Creek, Texas.

Silent Witness: The Karla Brown Murder Case (Onyx)

An account of the murder of Karla Brown describes how, after years of investigations, a prosecutor's brilliant courtroom strategies won a conviction against a long-time loser with a vicious hatred of women.

The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World’s Most Terrifying Murderers

Hollywood's make-believe maniacs like Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal Lecter can't hold a candle to real-life monsters like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and scores of others who have terrorized, tortured, and terminated their way across civilization throughout the ages. Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon.

Such Good Boys: The True Story of a Mother, Two Sons and a Horrifying Murder

Raised in the suburb of Riverside, California, 20-year-old college student Jason Bautista endured for years his emotionally disturbed mother's verbal and psychological abuse. She even locked him out of the house, tied him up with electrical cord, and on one occasion, gave him a beating that sent him to the emergency room. On the night of January 14, 2003, Jason strangled his mother. To keep authorities from identifying her body, he chopped off her head and hands, an idea he claimed he got from watching an episode of the hit TV series The Sopranos.

House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying

In the heart of Indianapolis in the mid-1960s, through a twist of fate and fortune, a pretty young girl came to live with a 37-year-old mother and her seven children. What began as a temporary childcare arrangement between Sylvia Likens's parents and Gertrude Baniszewski turned into a crime that would haunt cops, prosecutors, and a community for decades to come. When police found Sylvia's emaciated body, with a chilling message carved into her flesh, they knew that she had suffered tremendously before her death.

Rough Trade: A Shocking True Story of Prostitution, Murder, and Redemption

Early one morning in May, 1997, a young couple in the mountains of Colorado spotted a man dragging a body up a secluded trail. The man fled, leaving behind a bloody, dying woman. The investigation into the death of young street-walker Anita Paley would lead from that idyllic spot to the seamy underbelly of Denver and a world of prostitution, drug dealers, and violent criminals. And it would expose the lives of suspect Robert Riggan and Anita's friend Joanne Cordova, a former cop-turned-crack-addict and hooker.

One Breath Away: The Hiccup Girl - from Media Darling to Convicted Killer

When she was 15, Jennifer Mee developed an unrelenting case of the hiccups - hiccupping as many as 50 times a minute for months. Soon the Florida teen's strange story went viral. Dubbed the "Hiccup Girl" by the media, she gained international sympathy and appeared on a slew of popular TV shows. Eventually Jennifer's hiccups went away, and so did her fame.

Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town

This true story was the basis for the Broadway play, The Runner Stumbles, and the movie of the same name. In 1907, a Felician nun disappeared from her rural convent. When her bones were found buried in the dirt-floored basement of the remote, Gothic church she served, it caused a national sensation. Who killed her? The handsome priest? The jealous housekeeper? And, what other secret was uncovered along with her bones?

Profiler Roy Hazelwood is one of the world's leading experts on the strangest and most dangerous of all aberrant offenders - the sexual criminal. In Dark Dreams he reveals the twisted motive and thinking that go into the most reprehensible crimes. He also catalogs the innovative and remarkably effective techniques that allow law enforcement agents to construct psychological profiles of the offenders who commit these crimes.

Face-to-face with some of America's most terrifying killers, FBI veteran and ex-Army CID colonel Robert Ressler learned from them how to identify the unknown monsters who walk among us - and put them behind bars. Now the man who coined the phrase "serial killer" and advised Thomas Harris on The Silence of the Lambs shows how he has tracked down some of the nation's most brutal murderers. Join Ressler as he takes you on the hunt for America's most dangerous psychopaths. It is a terrifying journey you will not forget.

Every Mother's Nightmare

Reveals the harrowing story of two mothers, Jude Govreau and Mari Winzen, whose children were brutally killed by a vicious murderer, and recounts their efforts with a lone district attorney to bring the murderer to justice.

A Checklist for Murder: The True Story of Robert John Peernock

Robert Peernock appeared to have the ideal life; working as a pyrotechnics engineer and computer expert and coming home to his wife and daughter, he projected the American dream. Even when he and his wife separated, it seemed amicable, just a small bump for the well-to-do family. But there was madness in his house: in private, Peernock was violent, subtly manipulative, and bordering on psychotic.

Then No One Can Have Her

She thought she had married her soul mate. But when Carol Kennedy could no longer tolerate her husband's reckless womanizing and out-of-control spending, the artist, therapist, and mother of two had to let him go. Just weeks after their divorce, Carol was found in her Arizona ranch home - bludgeoned to death with a golf club. Her ex, Steven DeMocker, was the prime suspect. Yet it took the authorities months to arrest him - and years to convict....

The Trail of Ted Bundy: Digging Up the Untold Stories

Within the audio of The Trail of Ted Bundy: Digging Up the Untold Stories, you'll hear the voices - many for the first time - of some of Ted Bundy's friends, as they bring to light the secrets of what is was like to know him while he was actively involved in murder. The stories of his victims are here as well, as told by their friends, including the information and anecdotes that didn't make it into the investigative files and are being published here for the first time.

The Cases That Haunt Us: From Jack the Ripper to JonBenet Ramsey, the FBI's Legendary Mindhunter Sheds Light on the Mysteries That Won't Go Away

Did Lizzie Borden murder her own father and stepmother? Was Jack the Ripper actually the Duke of Clarence? Who killed JonBenet Ramsey? America's foremost expert on criminal profiling and 25-year FBI veteran John Douglas, along with author and filmmaker Mark Olshaker, explores those tantalizing questions and more in this mesmerizing work of detection. With uniquely gripping analysis, the authors reexamine and reinterpret the accepted facts, evidence, and victimology of the most notorious murder cases in the history of crime.

Salt of the Earth

Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his 12-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied. Tips and sightings poured in as lawmen and volunteers combed the Cascades forest.

Publisher's Summary

Based on five years of investigative reporting and research into forensic psychology and criminology, Erased presents an original profile of a widespread and previously unrecognized type of murder: not a hot-blooded, spur-of-the-moment crime of passion, as domestic homicide is commonly viewed, but a cold-blooded, carefully planned, and methodically executed form of erasure. These crimes are often committed by men with no criminal record or history of violence whatsoever, men leading functional and often successful lives until the moment they kill the women, and sometimes children, they claimed to love. A surprising number go on to kill a second or even third wife or girlfriend, often in exactly the same way.

In more than 50 chilling case studies, Marilee Strong examines the strange and complex psychology that drives these killers, from the murder a century ago that inspired the novel An American Tragedy to Scott Peterson, Mark Hacking, Jeffrey MacDonald, Ira Einhorn, Charles Stuart, Robert Durst, Michael White, Barton Corbin, and many others. Erased also looks at how these men manipulate the legal system and exploit loopholes in missing persons procedures and death investigation, exposing how easy it can be to get away with murder.

This was one of the most riveting, informative and -- I'm almost afraid to say this, because a book on this subject should be somber and difficult -- ENTERTAINING audiobooks I've read this year. Of course, she treats the subject with all the seriousness it deserves, but she also invests it with a life that true crime writing often misses in it's cold recitation of fact after fact, detail after detail. But it's almost impossible to turn away from the parade of sad, complex and truly unbelievable stories the author relates about these "Eraser Killers." But even though almost every case she describes has the same basic plot elements and character types (sociopath kills trusting lover and elaborately disposes of body), the author reveals a compelling throughline in the stories and manages to find the genuine heart and soul of each person involved. Case in point: I'm guessing you, like me, thought you had heard everything you wanted to know about Scott and Lacey Peterson. But Marilee Strong does an amazing job relating the small, human details we've never heard about, and suddenly you're reading about real flesh and blood people who you find yourself actually invested in. Not necessarily LIKING, but invested in. The narrator plays a big part in the success of this audiobook; she is one of those rare narrators that is so good for the material, so evocative in their reading that they almost completely disappear. And that may be the highest compliment I can pay a narrator. I really enjoyed this book, and if you have even a minor interest in true crime, human tragedy, or great non-fiction writing, I suspect you will enjoy it too.

Marilee Strong uses compelling anecdotal evidence to argue that many women who come up missing or dead, could well have been murdered - ie "Erased." She calls for more timely investigation of missing women and timely processing of missing persons' reports. Using the Scott Peterson case as a common thread, Strong argues that there is a growing number of men who murder women because they are no more practical use to them. She raises an important issue, builds a strong case, and will stir the reader with her arugments. Erased is well written, thought provoking, and well read by Deb Thomas.

This was a very interesting book. It does mostly talk about the death of Lacy Peterson but does describe some other cases that are similar. I like Ann Rule and have read most of her books and I believe you would like this book if you like Ann Rule. Also, if you like this book, consider "True Story" by Michael Finkel.

I thought this an interesting audio book which was well read by the Narrator. I work in Domestic Violence and admit to cringing every time I heard the term erased but the book was insightful and worth listening to. One that I would recommend spending your dollars on. The author states that these offenders behave in a manner contrary to their nature and there is no reported history of DV in most of the cases of these so called "erased women" but I would suggest there would be as most woman that I assist confide they don't talk about it even to their most loved ones.

I downloaded this title because it looked like an interesting topic, certainly a timely topic. I had two problems with it though; first, the author constantly and repeatedly keeps saying the phrase eraser killers. I understand. You want to coin a new term for a certain type of killer, you want to make sure you get credit for a new term, but after the thirty third time of hearing how and why she calls these men erasers in the first hour of the book, I wanted to scream, "I get it", now tell me something interesting. That is the second problem, the writing just wasn't interesting and in some cases downright confusing, and mostly just boring. The author switches between killer subjects right in the middle of a paragraph and you are left thinking she is talking about one killer, when she is actually writing about someone else without any lead in or indication of a change. I went back and replayed one three minute segment three times because I thought I missed something or fast forwarded. No, I didn't miss anything. It was just as confusing the third time as the first. This seems like a great topic for a book, but I can't recommend this author or text, but I will give her the credit for creating a new term for a specific type of killer. I got that part.

Wow, I am surprised at the good reviews. The poor writing of this book was awful. It repetitive and contradictory at the same time. Nearly every sentence had three or more descriptors that mean the same thing like "deceptions, lies, falsehoods". Or "eerily, hauntingly, mistifyingly". It drove me crazy. The contradictions were confusing. I was constantly rewinding to see if I'd miss heard. For example, she says that "eraser" killers are not psychopaths and then goes on to describe how they are. She says at one point that psychopaths have no emotional reactions, but then tells how one killer throws up upon hearing his mistress in an interview. Sounds like an emotional reaction to me. The term "eraser" is used to describe a type of killer who are methodical planners, like studying forensics, and then kill cleanly and dispose of the body, effectively "erasing" the victim. But she identifies killers who shot their victims and stage it as a robbery or suicide as "erasers" but they don't really fit the definition she gave. The author also states her own judgments and conclusions as fact. Such as saying these men are motivated by a blank desire to be rid of an outdated possession when they kill their wives, but there is no evidence given or any killer interviews. The writing meanders badly as well. There are whole paragraphs describing psychopaths, then a few words about something different, but then more paragraphs reiterating what she'd already said about psychopaths with no tie in! She also claims to know things known only to the killer such as when one bought cigarettes that it was his "reward". It looked to me like she was jumping to conclusions and making her own biased judgments. I paid 8.95 for this book and am kicking myself. The author said she had worked in journalism, but I saw absolutely no evidence of any experience or skill in writing. Disappointing.

Very interesting book with a strong and important argument -- that law enforcement needs to address intimate-partner murders quickly and seriously. There's a lot of discussion of the Scott Peterson case. The reading is quite fast, though, with few pauses. Because it was so interesting I stuck it out and eventually got used to it, but just keep it in mind.